prisoners of war; the English to take possession of the town on the following morning, and of the fort the day after.[1] The Governor and Council of Pondicherry, on their part, claimed personal freedom for the inhabitants, security for their property, and protection for the Roman Catholic religion. Accordingly on the following morning the English were admitted to possession of the town; and, as some tumult was apprehended, the citadel was delivered up on the evening of the same day.
When Fort St. David fell into the hands of the French, its fortifications had been destroyed. The Court of France had indeed instructed Lally to destroy all the maritime possessions of the English which might fall into his hands. The Court of Directors of the English East India Company had, in retaliation, ordered their Governments to resort to similar measures in the case of conquests made from the French. In consequence of these orders, the fortifications of Pondicherry were demolished; and with a view further to embarrass any attempt that might be made by the French to re-establish themselves in India, all the public buildings within the works were subsequently destroyed.
From the time when Pondicherry fell, the French power in the Carnatic was virtually at an end. Gingee still remained in their possession, as did also Thiagur: but the former yielded to a force under Captain Stephen Smith; and the latter, after sustaining sixty-five days of blockade and bombardment, capitulated to Major Preston. Mahé, and its dependencies on the coast of Malabar, also surrendered; and early in the year 1761 the French had neither any regular military force in any part of India, nor any local possessions, except their factories of Calicut and Surat, which were merely trading establishments.
- ↑ Count de Lally was a member of an Irish family which had followed the fortunes of James the Second to France. His reception in France, after the fall of Pondicherry, was excessively unjust to one who had laboured strenuously to maintain the French interests in India. He was thrown into prison and executed on charges of extortion and treason; the groundless nature of which was fully proved twelve years after by the filial piety of his son, Lally Tollendal, who obtained a reversal of the proceedings, and was admitted to the possession of his father's estates.
